


with a little help from my friends

by tenderjock



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, and YES its a holiday fic YES its february i know that thank you, canon-typical gore & violence & alcohol use, this story takes place in an au where covid doesnt exist because [handwaves] i do what i want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29290794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: "We're the ones who are exposed now," Booker says. Nicky opens his mouth to argue, but Andy cuts him off."Booker's right," she says.OR: the one where they don't find Nile.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Old Guard - team
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95





	with a little help from my friends

**Author's Note:**

> huge thanks to @hauntedjaeger (saellys) / @hauntedfalcon on tumblr for betaing this. title from with a little help from my friends by the beatles. enjoy!

It’s been sixty-four days, twelve hours, and seventeen minutes. Booker knows this because the doctor has kept a clock running on the bedside table next to Nicky’s cot. Nicky will read the time out loud if Andy or Joe asks. So far, Andy hasn’t asked. Booker asked, once, and got ringing silence.

Andy is pale, but no longer actively bleeding. She has been stripped down to her underwear and nearly every inch of exposed skin is burnt, scabbed over, bruised, or taped on by an electrode. She spends most of the time in that horrible lab staring blankly up at the ceiling.

Booker spends a lot of the time sleeping. The cot he’s strapped to isn’t comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but Booker has cultivated the art of sleeping anywhere. He sleeps and he argues with Joe. There’s a certain comfort to the routine; he thinks Joe and Nicky feel the same way. Andy just stares, jaw clenched, eyes glazed over.

Their original plastic restraints have been replaced with more secure chains wrapping around their chest, throats, and legs after Nicky nearabout ripped his arm off trying to get out of the strap-and-buckles. Joe had screamed, a hoarse, animal noise as Nicky dislocated his shoulder and tore skin and tendons, blood gushing like something out of a slasher flick. Booker looked over, saw what was happening, and turned his head to the side to go back to sleep.

The new restraints were a lot more effective.

Anyway: it’s been sixty-four days and change when the doctor gets a call. She  _ tsks _ to herself and goes to answer it. 

Booker can only see Joe out of the corner of his eye, but he knows the particular brand of stillness that he is exhibiting right now. It’s the stillness of a cat that has its prey right where it wants it.

Craning his head to look over, Booker sees Joe stretch against his restraints and snag the hypodermic needle that the doctor had left on the table beside him. He catches it with his pinky finger and settles back onto his cot, twisting the needle to unlock his restraints.

The doctor finishes up her call and takes a moment to write something down in her innocuously cheery daily planner. Booker and Nicky meet gazes for the first time in over sixty-four days and Nicky mouths,  _ aiutaci _ .

“Oh, Christ,” Booker says, not quite a shout. “Oh, God, she’s bleeding out –”

Andy has caught on. She starts shaking, eyes rolled back, like some sort of epileptic fit. Booker is impressed; she’s really selling it. The doctor rushes to her side. Behind them, Joe has gotten one hand free and is frantically working on the second one.

The doctor bends over Andy, one hand going to her shoulder in an attempt to make her lie still. Booker could have told her that Andy wouldn’t like that. She bares her teeth and headbutts the doctor, right in the nose. Booker hears cartilage crunch, and after a long moment, blood starts to flow.

Joe is working on his second foot now, hands careful so as not to make time-wasting mistakes. Nicky’s hands clench into fists, and then Joe is free –  _ free! _ – and unbuckling Nicky from his own restraints.

The doctor staggers to her feet, looks around, and grabs a scalpel. Joe is between her and the door. Booker would admire her dedication to not dying today, if he found anything about her to be admirable.

“You hurt Nicky,” Joe says, and disarms her one-handed. “You shouldn’t have done that.” He slits her throat with her own scalpel and places her still-warm body aside. He’s on the verge of tears.

Nicky makes a low sound, says, “Yusuf,” and he snaps out of it.

“C’mon,” Joe says instead, and finishes up on Nicky’s restraints. Nicky goes to Andy, who is still looking worryingly pale, even with the blood transfusion. She’s lively enough, though; she gets up under her own steam and starts yanking the electrodes off of her body. Her torso is mottled with purple and yellow bruises. Joe wipes the blood off his hand using the disinfectant wipes on the lab table, and there’s a moment –

There’s a moment where Booker thinks that Joe is going to turn away and leave that horrible little laboratory with Booker still strapped to that horrible little medical cot, and he’s not sure if he’s more ashamed or relieved when Joe starts to unfasten his wrist restraint.

“Asshole,” Joe says, and he’s angry, blistering with it, but there’s also sorrow there. “We’re getting everybody out, today.”

They do all get out, Booker lending Andy his overshirt and Nicky finding them all guns in the little armory for the guards one floor down from the lab. It’s bloody and brutal and Andy barely, barely makes it through it, but they manage to get to the Juliet safehouse to wash up and eat. All four of them devour the food that they find there – stale bread and cheese and quince jelly – like they haven’t had a proper meal in, well. Sixty-four days.

Then they go to a pub in London and Booker sits outside in the rain while the others deliberate. It’s too long and not long enough when Andy comes outside to join him.

“There’s got to be a price,” she tells him, and what a goddamned price it is.

He takes it, all six hundred and forty years of it, because what else is he supposed to do? He takes it, and he asks, “Will you go after her? Free?” That’s one of the many things he and Joe had argued about, in Merrick’s lab.

“No,” Andy tells him. “You were right –” he snorts “– when you said that we were the ones in danger. Finding her now would just be putting her in the crosshairs. We’re going for Merrick. We need to end this, for good.”

Booker nods, spinning his empty glass on the rain-soaked table. It probably wasn’t good for Andy, to be out in the cold with her injuries, and like she heard his thoughts, she claps a hand on his shoulder and says, “Have some faith, Book.”

Booker watches his second family walk away from him, and feels the rain soak through his leather jacket, and tries like hell not to cry, with mixed results.

: :

Dani’s under the bar, scrubbing what she hopes was pineapple juice off of the bar well. Michel really needs to learn how to clean after his shift. She hears the door swing open and the man’s heavy footsteps, and resists the urge to heave a sigh. It’s only 5:00 PM and already God is testing her.

“We are not open,” she says in French, replacing the well drinks and moving on wiping down the front of the bar. She glances up.

The man is standing stock-still in the doorway. The midafternoon sun is backlighting him so Dani can’t see his face, but something about his posture indicates surprise.

“We open at 18:00,” she says, in case he didn’t hear her. “Come back later, sir.”

He laughs, a laugh without a trace of humor, and slings himself into a bar stool. Dani’s hand goes to the baton underneath the bar.

“It’s you!” he says, and there – she thought she recognized him, for a moment. That laugh was like something out of a long-lost memory, or a dream, and she frowns, but she’s still got the baton in a death grip.

“It’s you,” he says again, and: “I found you.” Dani hesitates. Her French, already okay, had gotten pretty damn good in the last four months, but she was always riding the fine line of not actually fucking understanding what people were saying.

“Sir,” she says again, “I’m sorry but –”  _ You have to go _ , until the man tips back his hood, lets the light fall onto his face, and Dani realizes where she knows him from.

“You’re the Sad Man from my dreams,” she says, and she says it in English. A moment too late, she realizes that he probably doesn’t speak English, but all he does is raise an eyebrow and reach across the bar to grab their well vodka.

“I’ve been called worse,” he says, also in English. He reaches over again for a pair of glasses, pours them out, and offers one to Dani. She’s not much of a drinker, to be entirely honest, but she takes it. She feels like she’s going to need it.

She considers the glass for a moment and then downs it in one shot. The Sad Man laughs.

“My kind of woman,” he says, and follows suit.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asks, after a moment of silence in which they both stare blankly at their empty glasses. The Sad Man exhales, short, like he’s trying not to laugh, or cry, or both.

“My name,” he says, “Is Sebastien le Livre. You can call me Booker.”

“Booker,” Dani says. “You’ve lived in America?” That’s the first thing everyone says to her, _ oh _ ,  _ but you are from America? _ She’s really trying to work on the accent.

“For a while,” he says with a shrug. He pours himself another shot but doesn’t take it. Instead, he squints at her. Him sitting on the barstool is almost exactly at eye level with Dani standing behind the bar. He’s tall. She already knew that, though, based on the height difference between him and the Tired Woman and the Lovebirds.

(There was also, of course, the Drowning Woman. Dani tries not to think of her, when she can manage it.)

The Sad Man sits in front of her, at her little bar in Paris, squints at her and says, “But that is not the question you want to ask.”

Dani glances at him, glances away. It’s true. It’s also true that she doesn’t really know what question she wants to ask him, when faced with the reality of it all.

“It all” being the way her knife slipped when she was cutting limes yesterday, and how she has nothing, not a scratch, not a scar to show for it. “It all” being how she was poked and prodded and cut and measured and weighed in that Marine Corps hospital facility in Germany for – God, for months, with no answers or explanation. “It all” being the sensation of having her throat cut –

Dani shakes her head to rid herself of those thoughts, and glances back at the Sad Man. Booker. He’s attempting to make a tone out of running his finger along the glass edge, with moderate success.

“How are you in my dreams?” Dani asks, finally.

Booker gives a little shrug, casting his gaze out to the back of the bar – not like he’s lying, but like he’s trying to word something very delicate. “There are basically two schools of thought,” he says, then clears his throat. “But, ah, I’ll keep it short. It’s so we can meet each other, even continents apart.” He pours himself another drink.

“ _ We _ ,” Dani says. “We being – who, exactly.” The words come out flat, belying the way her stomach feels like it's rearranging itself in her guts. This is it; this is what she’s been waiting for, day after day, for her past to catch up with her. And it finally did, but not the way she expected.

“We’re the old guard. Fighters. Warriors of old, fighting the good fight,  _ et cetera _ ,” Booker says. “Or, I, ah, was. One of them. We’re not – really talking right now.”

“Great,” Dani mutters to herself. “I get drafted into a Special Ops team and they’ve got the drama of a high school theater troupe.” Booker snorts into his vodka. There’s something that stuck out about his explanation, though: “Warriors of old, you said. What does that mean?”

Booker’s eyes flick from the over-bar mirror to hers and back again. “You know.”

“No,” Dani says, clenching a hand around her empty glass. “I don’t. Tell me.”

Booker tips back the last of his vodka and closes his eyes. “We can’t die,” he says, then amends himself: “We don’t die. Not from disease, not from hunger, not from bullets or blood. Neither can you.”

“No,” Dani says. Her mouth has suddenly gone very dry. “No, that’s not – possible.”

“A lot of things are possible,” Booker says. His finger runs along the edge of his glass, and he’s finally got it,  _ wooooooooooh wooooooooooooooooh woooh.  _ “I would say, probably six months ago, you would say it was impossible for a woman to get her throat slit and live to tell the tale, without a mark to speak of.”

Dani’s hand goes to her neck. She swallows, hard, and then takes the bottle of vodka from him before he drinks it all. “Get out. We open at six.”

Booker raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t argue. He slides to his feet, a little bit unsteady, and places his empty glass down on the bar definitively.

“When is your shift over?” he asks instead. Dani exhales, tries to shrug the tension out of her shoulders, and glances at her watch. Half an hour until they open. She could give him a fake time, make Michel walk her home tonight. She could. But she thinks of the Sad Man in her dreams, the only connection she has to her past, and finds she doesn’t have the heart to argue with him.

“Midnight,” she says. Booker nods, and flicks his hood back up.

“I will see you at the witching hour, then,” Booker says, and laughs that same humorless laugh. He tips an imaginary hat at her. “ _ Adieu _ , Dani.”

He’s almost at the door when Dani bursts out, “Nile.”

Booker stops, turns around. “What was that?”

“My name,” Nile says. “It’s not Dani. It’s Nile.”

: :

Midnight comes and goes in the haze that is her workweek. She’s managed to get an early shift today, filling in for Chloe, but tomorrow she’s back on the graveyard shift. Dani –  _ Nile _ doesn’t really mind the late work, and the pay is decent enough after tips. Booker comes to her place of work at three ‘til midnight, and they don’t talk so much as she stumbles home, beaten and workworn, and he follows.

She’d be worried that he’s a rapist, or a serial killer, or a serial killer/rapist crossover event but, honestly, she doesn’t have many friends in Paris. And none of them are as interesting as the Sad Man is shaping out to be.

And so, somehow, Booker ends up crashing for the night in her cramped studio apartment in Paris. She’s not entirely sure how it happened, but the next morning when she wakes to make herself a coffee, he’s still there, compressing all 6’2’’ of himself onto her little hand-me-down loveseat. It can’t be comfortable.

Nile looks at him, asleep, for a long moment. She supposes that she’s relieved, that there’s someone to explain the things that have been going on with her for the last six or so months. Relief, though, isn’t quite the word for the way her stomach has been tying itself into knots.

Without opening his eyes, Booker says, “Take a picture.” Nile snorts, and turns back to her coffee.

Halfway through boiling the water for her press, Booker stumbles into the part of the apartment that she’s designated as the “kitchen.” Nile shoots him a sidelong glance but doesn’t say anything.

“What are you going to do,” he says, finally. It isn’t a question, really.

“What,” she says, a little surprised. “What am I supposed to do?”

“The others,” he says. His voice is a little rough with sleep and a hangover. “Are you going to contact them?” Nile measures out her coffee and pours the boiling water into the press.

The thing is: she remembers those months in Germany well. She was tested, every morning, drawing blood and swabbing spit and being weighed and measured. Nile spent each day stuck between tedium and terror, that the next test would tell them something about her that was – inhuman. Wrong. Something that she felt, when each cut resulted in an expanse of perfectly healed skin instead of a wound.

When she escaped, ducking out in nurse’s scrubs and stealing a car to get herself the fuck out of Germany, she swore she wouldn’t find herself in a lab again. She knew that she couldn’t trust just anyone, that her contact to her family would be limited. She hadn’t counted on how lonely she would be, after.

So, when Booker came to her and said,  _ we’re the old guard, _ there was a part of Nile that wanted to believe him, no matter the statistical improbability of it all. When Booker said  _ we _ , when he said,  _ warriors of old, _ something aching in Nile’s chest got tight and painful. Because she wanted to believe him. God, beyond anything else, she wanted to believe him.

“Where are you staying?” she asks, instead of any of that. And he shrugs, a little bit, and he says,  _ I stay where they’ll take me, _ and Nile braces herself for Booker to become a frequent guest, rather than an intermittent crazy man.

And he does, that is, he  _ does _ become a frequent guest in her little studio apartment. She finds, though, that she doesn’t mind as much as she probably should. Nile had gotten used to living with someone, the push and give of it – first living with her mother and brother in a cramped one-bedroom, then in the military. There’s a comfort in having someone within close reach, waking up to hear the slow breathing of someone else in your space.

It’s just for a little while, she tells herself, until she can figure some things out. A little while turns into a few weeks, then almost a month. They don’t talk much, all considering. Booker walks her to and from work – which, to be entirely honest, is something of a relief. Navigating the streets of Paris at night safely is something that is made much easier when accompanied by a  _ man _ , a big, buff man at that, one who knows Paris like the back of his hand.

Booker sleeps in her apartment, on the loveseat, which has got to be bad for his back. He drinks all of her beer and is generally a nuisance to live with. Sometimes, when he’s very drunk, he talks to her about the others that she sees in her dreams – brave Joe and kind Nicky and their leader, Andy, labrys in hand. He can paint a story with just a few words. Nile learns to love the late nights before her shift, where Booker, sipping on his whiskey, will tell her about his team – the team that  _ used _ to be his, at least.

All of it distracts Nile from the approach of the holidays, even as the weather gets colder and the Christmas decorations go up. She starts to think that this will be her life forever and always, shifts at the bar and returning home to Booker, crocheting little squares on her loveseat.

It’s not that – it’s not that she minds, exactly. It’s just that she’s always pictured more for herself.

: :

She meets Booker in a park after work on Christmas Eve. It’s the early morning yet, and Nile is worn out, equal parts the customer service job and the echo of pain that Christmas brings. She hasn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. While she’s waiting for Booker, Nile stares down at the phone she’s stolen from a drunken asshole at the bar last night.

She has to gut herself up to make the call, but once she plugs in the number and hits the button, she finds herself almost giddy with excitement.

It’s 11:00 PM in Chicago. Nile’s mom still answers.

“Hello?” she says, voice sharp. Nile starts to tear up, entirely by accident. Her mom’s voice is wary, but not unfriendly. It is, after all, not the first time Nile has called since – since Germany.

“Hi, Mom,” Nile says, finally, voice choked up. Her mother goes silent for a second, then gives a shaky exhale.

“Baby,” she says. “Oh, baby, merry Christmas.” Nile sniffs and blinks back tears.

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” she says. “Is Duke there?”

“Yeah, baby, I’ll get him on the phone,” she says, then: “DUKE! GET YOUR BOOTY OVER HERE!”

“Hi, Duke,” Nile says, once her mom has put him on the line. “Merry Christmas.”

“ _ Nile _ ,” Duke says, voice breaking halfway through the syllable. “Are you okay? Are you alright? Where –”

“I can’t tell you where I am,” Nile interrupts. “But I’m okay. And I need to go now –”

“Wait!” her mom and Duke say in unison, then both laugh a little. She laughs, too, through the salt water clumping up her eyelashes. It’s not safe to stay on the line too long with them. It’s not safe to call them at all, really, but – it’s Christmas.

“I love you,” Nile says. “I will always love you. Merry Christmas. Goodbye.” Before her nerve can fail her, she hangs up, then smashes the phone under her boot and tosses the pieces in a nearby trash can. Sucks to be the drunk that forgot their phone at her bar, she guesses.

After a moment, Nile puts her head in her hands and sniffles. The tears don’t come; she half-expected them to, but after a few blinks, she’s fine. This, too, gets easier with time.

Footsteps on the icy pavement make her look up. Booker is there, bundled up in a ridiculous parka, paper bag in his hand.

“ _ Bonjour _ , Nile,” he says, while Nile tries to wipe away what few tears escaped.

“ _ Bonjour, _ Booker,” she says. Then, desperate for a topic that isn’t incredibly and personally painful, she points to the bag and says, “What’s that?” Booker takes something out of it.

“I didn’t have a use for this,” Booker says, handing Nile a clumsily wrapped cylinder.  _ Politesse _ aside, she immediately rips the paper off, revealing a big jar of, of all things, pickled walnuts. There’s something about Christmas presents that makes a soft and warm feeling well up in her chest, something that hasn’t been there in a long while. It’s nice. Normal. She’s needed some normalcy, recently.

“Aw, thanks,” she says. Then her eyes catch on the label. “These expired four months ago.”

“Yeah,” Booker says. “That’s why I didn’t want them.”

Nile considers popping a punch right up in Booker’s face. Instead, she laughs, a sudden noise that sparks out of her without her consent. God. He’s such an ass.

“You’re such an ass,” she says, tucking the jar in the crease of her elbow. He grins, an actual grin, brightening up his whole face. He looks decades younger with it.

“How’s your Christmas going?” he asks. He pulls a flask out of his pants pocket. She shrugs.

“Been better,” she says. “Been worse.”

“Really?” Booker says. His words indicate surprise, but his tone doesn’t.

“Yeah,” Nile says. She hesitates for a moment, struggling to find the words to explain the huge welling hole of pain that Christmas brings. “My dad – uh, he died. Before Christmas. Just before Christmas.”

Booker hums. She shoots him a sideways glance.

“But you knew that,” she says. “Didn’t you?”

“Well,” Booker says. “Yes. I don’t half-ass my research.” He settles down next to her, flicking the fur-lined hood of the parka back as he sits.

They’re sitting on the park bench in front of an intricately constructed church. Nile isn’t a Catholic, but this church is how she’s imagined all Catholic churches to be. In other words: it’s beautiful, and untouchable. Ornate. Something beyond all that she pictured God to be. Booker puts a hand on her shoulder, and squeezes.

Nile swallows hard against the lump in her throat, and blinks several times. The tears come, finally, without her intending them. After a moment of awkward silence, Booker slings an arm around her and hugs in tight.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t – well. I’m sorry, Nile.”

Nile turns her face into Booker’s solid shoulder. She is leaking saltwater and doesn’t know how to stop.

“It’s fine,” she says, voice caught in her throat. “It’s fine.” Booker doesn’t argue even though it’s clearly not true. He doesn’t say anything at all.

They sit there for – Nile doesn’t know how long. Eventually, the tears dry up. Booker doesn’t release her immediately. Nile leans into the touch.

“I’m sorry,” Booker says again. “I really am, Nile.” Nile sniffs and manages to find her voice.

“It’s been a while,” she says. “But thank you.”

_ Thank you _ . Booker squeezes around her shoulders one more time and pulls away. Nile realizes it’s the first hug she’s had in over six months, and startles herself with a snort of laughter. It’s pathetic. She’s pathetic.

Booker takes another swig from his flask, then offers it to her. She shakes her head. God. If  _ she’s _ pathetic, what does that make Booker?

Nile shoots another glance at him. He’s not looking at her; he’s looking at the church, and there’s something deep and aching in his gaze. To distract him, and maybe also herself, Nile says, “Merry Christmas, Booker.”

Booker doesn’t look away from the ornate wrought iron of the church’s gate. Softly, he says, “Merry Christmas, Nile.”

This time it’s Nile who slings an arm around Booker. She squeezes, and he lets his head fall to her shoulder. They sit there for – she doesn’t know how long. The sun rises, and they sit there, and for a moment on that cold park bench Nile feels remote – untouchable. Like the immortal Booker claims she has become.

Nile closes her eyes, feels the weak morning sunlight on her face, and smiles, despite everything.

: :

New Year’s Eve is a busy night for bartenders. Nile’s back on her graveyard shift, meaning that when she starts work, she’ll get a large number of drunks trying to kiss her. Ugh. She’s not looking forward to it.

She’s not looking forward to the new year much at all, to be entirely honest. Nile thinks that she’s going to have to relocate soon. She’s been in Paris for too long. She was thinking somewhere in Spain next, maybe, seeing as she pretty much speaks the language and doesn’t have to travel outside of the European Union to get there.

Nile hasn’t tried her new, fake, passport out at airport security. She wonders if Booker would make a better fake for her; he’s said that it’s one of the things that he can do, with a wry twist to his mouth.

Booker won’t move with her, she doesn’t think. He’s got his therapist here, and his haunts, and maybe a place to stay that isn’t her loveseat. He loves Paris, although he says Marseille is better. Nile’s never been to Marseille, so she can’t really speak to that, but in Paris, Booker has a place, even if it’s just as the homeless guy on the street corner. She can’t ask him to give that up for her.

So, yes, the changing of the year brings up mixed emotions, fighting for dominance in Nile’s gut. She sets herself in front of the cracked mirror in her bathroom, door open so that she can talk to Booker, and starts her makeup routine.

“You know what’s fucked up,” Nile says, as she pulls out her array of cosmetic products. “Foundation.”

“Like for a building?” Booker says, a little distracted. When she glances at him in the mirror, she sees him trying to balance his flask upright on his nose.

“No, Booker, not like for a building. I’m doing my makeup right now, read the room.” She digs in her little makeup bag until she finds the foundation stick. She’s almost out.

“I thought you were complaining about makeup, not doing it,” Booker says, giving up on the nose-balancing thing and tossing his flask from one hand to the other instead, like a juggler’s ball. Nile wonders, in an aside, whether Booker can juggle. He seems to have an array of useless skills, like peeling an apple in one long strip with a Bowie knife and drinking a two-liter bottle of Gatorade without taking a breath.

“I can multitask,” Nile says, and then: “Also, how fucking terrible is it that women are  _ expected _ to wear makeup but men aren’t? I mean, you look ugly as hell right now –”

“Thanks ever so,” Booker says, wry, and she waves him away.

“I just mean, you look like you haven’t slept in six weeks and don’t know how to brush your hair. No one expects you to put a skin-tone liquid on top of your  _ real _ skin just to leave the house.”

“Ah,” Booker says. “I see what you mean. In my own defense, though, a lot of people think I’m homeless.”

“You  _ are _ homeless,” Nile says, dabbing on eyeshadow. “You sleep on my couch.”

Booker scoffs, tucking his flask back into a jacket pocket, and says, “Technicality.” Then, in a tone of voice that suggests that he knows she will not take his life advice, because all of his life advice is shitty: “You could always not wear makeup.”

"If I want tips, I wear makeup," Nile says, swiping some mascara on.

Booker makes a humming noise. "I'd tip you without makeup," he offers.

"Truly," Nile says, "A feminist hero." Then she has to stop bantering to do her eyebrows, which always and forever require all of her concentration.

"How do I look?" Nile said after she finished her whole look, striking a pose in front of the mirror. She’s gone ham on the glitter, since it  _ is  _ New Year’s Eve. She flicks a glance over to Booker, who is fucking around on his phone, probably destabilizing GameStop stock.

"You look great," Booker says, without looking up. Nile contemplates throwing something at his head. She doesn’t; she is a lady. And ladies only whip something at the heads of their friends about once, twice a month. She’s got to save it up for a moment that really calls for it.

They pile onto the metro, Nile in her exceptionally tight muscle tee, braids piled onto her head in a bun. She wasn’t joking about the tips; if fifteen minutes of makeup and a skimpy top gets her an extra Euro or two, she doesn’t mind.

Booker walks her to the bar, then fucks off to do whatever it is Booker does in his free time. Nile’s money is on either “drink” or “read”, which, to be entirely fair, is pretty much all he does in her company, too. Sometimes he crochets. The man needs to develop some purpose in life. He should probably talk to his therapist about that.

Then it’s the midnight rush. She’s working graveyard tonight, twelve to six, and she’s glad that Michel pulled her aside after her first day and suggested wearing comfortable shoes, because she’s on her feet, rushing around for all of those six hours. Finally,  _ finally _ it’s time to close. Gigi is helping her wipe down the bar and gather the last shot glasses to shove in the mostly-full dishwasher.

Nile has her back to the door when it happens. Gigi tsks and then says, their tone annoyed, “We’ve closed.”

“We know,” a voice says, and it’s a voice that Nile has heard in her dreams a few dozen times by now. She freezes, halfway through pouring out the last inch of beer in a glass into the sink. Nile watches the foamy liquid swirl down the drain. Next to her, Gigi’s got one of their hands on the baton beneath the counter.

Nile turns around. And there, just like Booker described and her dreams showed her: Andy, looking cool and sleek in her black-on-black ensemble, two men who must be Nicky and Joe flanking her. Joe looks fashionably gorgeous, although his beard is a little wild. Nicky looks like a white guy.

“Nile Freeman?” Andy asks, cocking an eyebrow. Nile’s Marine training kicks in; she notes the placement of weapons on all three of them, guns beneath their jackets and knives in their boots. She wonders, vaguely, with the part of her brain that isn’t currently panicking, how they managed to smuggle guns into France.

“Andy,” Nile says instead of any of that. Andy’s eyebrow skyrockets. “Hello,” she says, in English.

Gigi looks back and forth from Nile to the three other immortals. “Dani?” they ask, in French still. “What’s going on, Dani?”

“These are friends,” Nile says, “Like –”

The bar’s front door swings open and Booker enters, blowing on his hands to warm them. Andy, Nicky, and Joe swivel around in unison, Andy’s hand going to her shoulder holster. Booker freezes, two steps in. The door is still open. They all stare at each other, and Nile isn’t sure who looks most surprised. It would be funny, if it weren’t serious.

“Like Booker,” she finishes. Then: “Close the fucking door, were you raised in a barn,” Nile says, back to English.

“Ah,” Booker says, and he honestly looks like he’s thinking of making a run for it.

“I think,” Joe says, rather delicately for a man who was wearing leather pants, “That we could all benefit from some explanation.”

“Gigi,” Nile said. They’re giving her a Look, the same Look they gave her that first time when Booker had followed her to the bar and bowed her in the door, like the 19 th century gentleman that he most certainly wasn’t. “I’ll finish up here. Go home.”

They hesitate, blue-mascaraed eyes going from Booker to Nile to the three newcomers. “Fine,” they say eventually. “See you tomorrow, Dani.” They tug their coat on, throw one more skeptical look around the room, and leave.

“Here,” Nile says in English. She throws a dish rag at Booker, who catches it, blinking owlishly at her. “Since this is all your fault, you’ve got to help me clean.” He makes a face but starts wiping tables down. She’s found, over the last month or so, Booker will do pretty much anything if you tell him to do it in a firm tone of voice. The man loves to follow an order.

Nile takes a deep breath and looks over at Andy. “Hello,” she says, again, suddenly feeling – shy isn’t the word for it. She’s not sure what  _ is  _ the right word.

“Hello,” Andy says. “You have us at a disadvantage.” When Nile stares at her, she clarifies: “You know us. None of us know you.”

“Booker knows me,” Nile says, and immediately regrets it. Nicky’s brow furrows, just the slightest bit. Joe purses his lips and exchanges a look with Andy that Nile can’t read. Booker whistles the imperial march as he works, hitting all the notes. It’s mildly impressive; Nile would sooner cut off her right hand than admit to that.

“Let’s start there,” Andy says. “How do you know Booker?”

“She imprinted on me,” Booker says. He leans over the bar, snags the broom, and starts sweeping. “Like a baby duck.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Nile says. Booker lets out a bark of laughter, then looks back down at the floor and scratches the broom along. Again, there’s that feeling, slightly adjacent to shyness. Discomfort, Nile supposes. Sheepishness, maybe.

“He came into the bar one day and we recognized each other,” Nile tells Andy. “And now he sleeps on my couch and gets free drinks. I’m not entirely sure how either of those things happened.” She glances over at Booker as she says it, and is rewarded by seeing the corner of his mouth twitch up into a half-smile, as his hair falls into his eyes.

“So, you know who we are,” Nicky says, tone unreadable. His brow is still furrowed. “You know  _ what _ we are. What you are.”

Nile looks down at her hands. She’s still clutching a wet dish towel, twisting the fabric around in her hands. “Yeah,” she says, quiet. “Yeah, I do.”

There’s a somber silence for a moment. Then Andy says, “Do you serve drinks in this place? I could use a beer.”

The tension breaks. Booker, finishing sweeping, snorts. “We’ve got beer at home,” he says, and Nile would bristle at his use of the word ‘home’ to refer to  _ her  _ dinky little apartment if it didn’t cause something warm to expand in her chest.

He adds, “And Nile gets in trouble if she gives away too many drinks.” From his tone of voice, a person would think that this was a tragedy on par with the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

“Home,” Andy says, then: “Okay. Do you have enough to share?” Her gesture encompasses the three of them. Joe’s looking at Booker, still, a look on his face like – like he’s just seen something unexpected and is trying to categorize it. Nicky is looking at Nile, and when she meets his gaze, he smiles. It’s not a bad smile, as smiles go. She thinks she can get what Joe sees in him.

“Yeah,” Nile says. “I think we do.”

They pile onto the metro, Nicky and Joe holding hands and Andy hiding behind those oversized reflective sunglasses. It should look ridiculous, this serious-faced lady in polarized shades on the Paris metro at 6:30 AM. It doesn’t; it actually looks really fucking cool.

Nile leads the way to her apartment building, feeling slightly like a pied piper. Booker checks her mail while she punches in the key code for the building’s front door. Little old Gabrielle is sitting in the courtyard, knitting. She catches Nile’s eye and nods in acknowledgement. Then her gaze skips across Booker, to Andy and Joe and Nicky.

“Ah,” Gabrielle says, in French. “You have friends now.” Before Nile can answer, she turns back to her knitting, saving Nile from having to formulate a reply.

Nile glances around at the others. Andy, Nicky, and Joe are wearing expressions that range from ‘slightly bored’ to ‘insatiably curious and trying to hide it.’ Booker is still sorting through her mail. Nile despairs that this is her life. She takes the stairs to her second-story apartment at trot, and hears the others’ footsteps echo in the narrow corridor behind her.

It’s going to be a tight fit. Her studio barely has enough room for one person; two, in the last month or so, has been a stretch. There’s nowhere for Nicky and Joe to sit except the bed. Booker sprawls out on the loveseat. Andy stays stood in the middle of the room, taking in the absolute lack of anything she’s done with the place. Nile is suddenly extremely aware of how the walls are bare and the furniture is utilitarian at best.

She clears her throat. Everyone except Booker looks at her. Booker is crocheting, but his eyebrow quirks up. Nile remembers, that first morning, when Booker said,  _ What are you going to do _ and she didn’t have an answer. She still doesn’t have an answer.

Instead, Nile opens her mini fridge and takes out the six pack of beer that she’s managed to keep Booker from drinking. “Hope you like IPAs,” she says, and hands Andy a bottle and a bottle opener. She gives the rest of the six pack to Joe, who passes them out.

There’s a moment of hesitation before he hands a beer to Booker. No one mentions it, but Nile can see Booker’s face go tense and sad when it happens.

She’s not going to speak for the others, whether they were wrong or right in banishing Booker. Nile wasn’t there; she doesn’t know. But she’s seen how Booker has been here for her over the last five weeks. She doesn’t owe him, exactly, but she  _ does _ appreciate him. Nile hopes that that’s enough.

“You said Booker came into the bar you worked at,” Nicky says, brow furrowed again. “Did he know?”

Nile, surprised, glances over at Booker. It never occurred to her that maybe he wasn’t there by accident. It probably should have, she supposes. Things don’t just happen for no reason.

But: Booker snorts, and ties off the end of his square. “I just wanted a drink,” he says. “And my therapist said that I should diversify my social life, so I went to some fucking hipster bar that overcharges for their cocktails. It was chance.”

“You only ever drink hard liquor straight,” Nile shoots back. “You don’t pay for the cocktails. And we have  _ ambiance,  _ and hot bartenders. You pay for what you get.” Booker starts another square, waving her away with his left hand.

“It wasn’t chance,” Nicky says, tone a little grandiose. “It was like our dreams – our destiny.”

“More like  _ misery loves company _ ,” Nile says, and Booker chokes with laughter halfway through taking a sip of his beer. As well he should; Booker is the poster child for misery loving company. Joe thumps him on the back until he stops coughing. For a moment there, she can see it – she can see how Booker fit in with these people and how little, really, it would take for them to let him come back.

There’s pain there, and sorrow, a terrible ache that six-odd months hasn’t come close to healing. But they love him. He loves them. Maybe she could learn to love them, too.

They drink Nile’s six pack, and then Joe goes on a beer run –  _ I know what you fuckers like _ , he had said, then pointed at Nile,  _ another IPA? – _ and while he’s gone, Nicky relocates to the other half of the loveseat. Booker scooches over to give him room. Andy’s finally taken off her sunglasses to reveal a truly spectacular black eye. Nile hisses in sympathy, then has the sudden realization that she’ll never have a black eye ever again.

Well. Not  _ ever _ . But for a good long time, at least.

“You need ice for that,” Nile says, as matter of fact as she can. Before Andy can play tough, she digs around in her tiny freezer for a bag of frozen corn, wraps it in a dishtowel, and hands it over. Andy accepts it, a bemused tilt to her mouth. Joe takes that moment to arrive, alcohol in tow.

The rest of the morning is surreal, and not just because Nile started drinking at 8:00 AM. The others have questions about her, ranging from innocuous ( _ how long have you been in Paris? Do you like the city? _ ) to deeply unsettling ( _ Have you spoken to your family? How many times have you died thus far? _ ). She has questions, too, about the things that Booker hadn’t told her, wallowing in grief that he was.

Booker, for all that he was probably her best friend at this point, was a very unreliable narrator. She’s not sure what’s okay to ask. She’s not sure what  _ to _ ask, to be entirely honest.

A funny thing happens when her recycling gets too full and she has to take it out to the outside bin. Joe helps her, opening the door while she has her hands full. They’ve just gotten back from the dumpster outside and are at Nile’s apartment door, fumbling with her key, when they hear voices inside, muffled but understandable.

“You took care of her,” Andy says, voice clear. The woman would make a great drill sergeant, Nile thinks, with a voice that carries like that. “You looked after her.”

“There wasn’t much looking after,” Booker says. Nile can picture the little eyebrow tilt and the humorless half-smile on his face. “Nile can look after herself. It was more, ah. Being friends.” He clears his throat and stops there.  _ Quit while you’re ahead _ , Nile thinks, and grins to herself, just a little bit.

Andy doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Joe, who has clearly heard the same thing that she has, shoots her a conspiratorial glance. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” he says,  _ sotto voce _ . Nile snickers, and nods. They swing open the door, and everyone inside looks to them. Booker scrubs at the back of his neck. Andy smiles, razor-sharp.

“Hey, Nile,” she says, like they weren’t just talking about her. Nile tries to bite back a smile, but she can feel her lips turning up without her permission.

“Hey, Andy,” she says back. Then: “You guys got somewhere to stay? You can crash here, if you like.” Her tiny studio barely fits her and Booker, but she’s sure they can get creative.

The five of them end up crammed into her queen bed, the one luxury she allows herself in this little apartment. Booker’s lying facing her, back to the front door, which she can tell bothers him. Nicky and Joe are behind her, Joe spooning Nicky, Nicky’s elbows ramming into the small of her back. Andy has gone rogue and is lying crossways across the bottom of the bed, on top of all their feet.

Nile shifts, one hand reaching out towards Booker. After a moment, he takes it, careful not to jostle Andy as he does so.

“Thanks,” she whispers, then: “ _ Merci _ .”

“I didn’t do anything,” Booker whispers back, in English. She shrugs; Nicky murmurs something in his sleep and she goes still.

“Thanks anyways,” she says, and watches Booker relax, slowly, eyes fluttering shut as he slips into unconsciousness.

Nile isn’t sure how long it takes before she falls asleep, but it happens. The next thing she knows, she’s opening her eyes to midafternoon light falling through her only window. She gets up, untangling herself from Booker, and goes to make herself some coffee.

A few minutes later, Andy stumbles into the kitchen, yawning. “Hey, kid,” she says. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m good,” Nile says, and it’s even true. Who woulda thunk it? She smiles, looks at Andy, and says, again, “Yeah. I’m good.”

**Author's Note:**

> again, thank you to @hauntedfalcon!! i'm tenderjock on tumblr if you want to chat :)


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